Preventative Eating [Ep. 57]

This is the eat. Well, think. Well LivWell podcast, episode 57, preventative eating. Welcome to Eat Well, Think Well, Live Well; the podcast for women who want to lose weight, but are tired of counting and calculating all the food. I'm your host, Lisa Salsbury. I'm a certified health and weight loss coach and life coach, and most importantly a recovered chronic dieter. I'll teach you to figure out why you are eating when you aren't hungry, instead of worrying so much about what you are eating. Hey everyone. Welcome to the podcast this week. I have a solo episode for you today that has really been on my mind. But first I wanted to remind you, there are two weeks left To get in on one of those free food planning sessions I had originally said it was for a month, but I'm gone all next week taking my daughter to college. So I don't have any availability then. So you can book actually into the first week of September, if you're just wishing for some help to determine what to actually eat, that will help you lose weight and what works for your body. That's what we will be talking about in these sessions. You. You are not sure, like maybe what diet plan to follow and how that might fit in with the thought work I teach. So I'm going to show you how to do that and exactly what you should be eating. I have four spots left, like I said, the rest of this week. And then the first weekend, September. Is going to be it for this round of these free food planning sessions. So jump on one of those calls with me and get your meals planned and let's get you started on your weight loss. I just want to get you out of confusion. Because that is often what stops us is like, well, I want to lose weight, but I just don't know what to eat. And so we want to get out of that. They, um, you know, that, I don't know. Type thinking. So it, this is a one-on-one session, just you and me. So it's totally personal. And like I said, you'll leave knowing exactly what to eat, to start your weight loss. I will also be gifting you the workbook for my jumpstart, your weight loss sessions I used to do. So those used to be, 90 minutes ran$225. So you're getting that workbook for free. And, uh, that's just included here because I want to use some of the worksheets in that during our call. And then some of them you can use on your own later. So if you go to schedule right away, it will look like there's lots of times available, like more than four, but I do have a limit on my calendar. So once that last one is booked, then all of the availability will go away. So get your scheduled today. and I'll be honest if at the end of the call, I think you're a good fit for my coaching program. I will tell you about that. I'll let you know, but either way. The call is free. Well, let's jump into today's topic. I want to talk to you a little about preventative. Eating. This is what I call eating before you are hungry in order to prevent yourself from getting hungry later. It's a pretty common form of overeating. And I call it overeating any time you're eating when you aren't physically hungry. So you might think I'm going to tell you to never ever do this since I'm always telling you to wait for hunger. To then actually eat a meal, but actually we're going to talk about why we do this in the first place. And then when it might be appropriate. So we do this for several reasons. The first and foremost, most common reason is simply fear. We are afraid we might get hungry. And so we eat in order to prevent. Any feeling of discomfort. This isn't like strong fear, right? This isn't like. Major, you know, fear and anxiety. So it's just like a little bit of fear, but it's just hard to say like what that emotion really would be other than fear. But it's what we are fearful of is having the discomfort of hunger. We don't want to feel any kind of discomfort. So we eat, which is fascinating because if we eat when we aren't hungry, Especially if we're eating past enough, we make our bodies uncomfortable. So in order to avoid the discomfort of feeling a bit of hunger later, we overeat now and make ourselves uncomfortable. So fascinating. Right. But maybe you're like, no, I just grabbed a small snack. I'm not really getting full, so I'm not really getting uncomfortable. But then you end up uncomfortable in another way, which is jumping around the hunger scale. You're at negative one, you're at zero, you're a positive one, and you're just kind of jumping around that neutral space. And you're never getting to actually feel that physical enough feeling. You also perceive that you were hungry all day because you were snacking all day. This is again, something I hear from my clients a lot. I don't know. I just felt like I was hungry all day. I'm like, did you ever sit down and eat a meal? Did you wait for physical hunger? And eat to a positive three to enough. And often the answer is no. Well, I was afraid I was going to get hungry. So I had this snack and then I didn't have time to eat. So then I grabbed something else. Right. So it's a lot of this like preventative eating. And with this preventative eating, I'm not even talking about eating ahead of an event or an outing because we're nervous about that event. Like that's emotional eating in a whole other way where we're eating because we're nervous. I'm really just talking about eating in fear of getting hungry. That's it not because of what's happening or the event or what's going on in our lives. That's emotional eating in a whole different way. Another reason you might be doing this is because of diet, culture, or past diet messages that you're still listening to. So these go something like. Quote, eat frequently to prevent hunger. So you don't overeat. Or the other myth that says eating every few hours is going to boost your metabolism. Do you hear how annoyed I am at these statements? Eating before you are hungry, does not prevent overeating. In fact, you're actually probably overeating for the day. If you are constantly eating before your natural physical hunger cues tell you to do so. And the idea that your metabolism can be boosted by eating frequently has been completely debunked. I think we've talked quite a bit about metabolism and the relation to your muscle mass. That's the most direct way you could. Feasibly boost your metabolism by building more muscle, not by eating every two hours. Eating before you are hungry, will not prevent you from overeating, nor will it change your metabolism. So it's fascinating to me that we have vilified hunger so much. There's such a worry or fear about getting hungry. And I think it stems from this idea that if we feel physical hunger, That either something has gone wrong or that you're going to get crabby really, really fast. Believe me. I have been there. I have absolutely been afraid of being hungry. So I don't want you to think that I'm just like preaching to you as far as. Telling you what to do. I am telling you these things, because these are also the things that I believed in my dieting days. But we have seen the covers of magazines for so long. Tell us, lose 20 pounds in six weeks without being hungry. I find that to always be included on those diet magazine headlines, it was always such a selling point on a diet for me, if it touted that I didn't ever have to feel hunger. And I think I screwed up my hunger and fullness cues by constantly eating a cheese stick or a hard-boiled egg, every two hours, physical hunger. Is actually not that big of a deal. I know you're probably like, no, I hate being hungry, but honestly, if you are feeling the first signs of physical hunger, Think about what does it actually feel like? A little emptiness. A little lightness, maybe the first signal from your stomach, that it's time for some food. I'm not talking about the signal from the donut shop, pumping out that sugary sent into the parking lot, making your brain think like it's a good idea for a donut. That's not necessarily physical hunger. That feels more urgent. That's a craving or the type of hunger that starts in the brain and travels to the body. That's emotional hunger, and it feels pretty urgent to answer. Physical hunger. Isn't actually that urgent for a little while. In fact. You can, if you need to let that first wave of physical hunger pass and it will, you know, you have had this happen when you are busy doing a project and you're like, oh, I'm hungry, but I'm just going to finish this part real fast. And then another hour goes by and your body signals you again. Like, oh, Hey, I'm hungry. And you're like, okay, now I'm going to stop and go get something to eat. That's the normal cycle of physical, hunger. It will come in waves. And the peak of the wave generally is getting stronger and stronger as time goes on. But it's not generally an emergency the first time you feel it. If you have a strong fear of being hungry. Honestly, I want you to schedule a free coaching session with me. You can either schedule one of those free food planning sessions I was talking about, or my regular strategy session. We can really coach through this idea that hunger. Is something to be feared. It's actually something that I have coached several clients on and it's very specific to the person. So it's hard to coach you through it here on the podcast. It often stems from, like I said, these past I've had experiences where you either had a lot of hunger because you were on some ridiculously low intake, or maybe just the idea that you shouldn't ever feel hungry. So kind of two opposites there. So it's hard to say, you know, how you might feel, but we do have a lot of beliefs. That hunger is bad. And that's, that's, it's something that shouldn't occur, but I assure you, it is as natural as the urge to go pee. Like when your bladder is full, you get the signal that it's time to go. And you usually do that, like as soon as it's convenient, right? There's usually very little drama about it in the brain. If you could remember that a hunger signal is just as natural of a bodily cue as needing to go to the bathroom. That can go a long way. In managing your fear. If you are a worrier about the bathroom. You might do better liking it to something else. Like temperature cues. You take your coat off when you go in a building because your body cues you that it's warmer in here. And so no need for the coat. You don't continue wearing it inside because you might get cold when you go out. Right. You wait until your body signals. I'm cold. And then you put on a layer. So that is just kind of one way to think about what are some of the other bodily cues that we get that are really no big deal to our brain, where you're just like, oh, I feel this. And I'm going to take care of it. I want to start thinking of hunger in that way. I'm going to wait until I feel hungry in a wait until I feel cold. And then I put the coat on. Right. Then I going to go ahead and eat. So back to that preventative eating where I see this a lot. Is like heading out on errands and you think I better get a snack or eat whatever, because I don't want to get hungry while I'm shopping or it's like, well, I don't know when we're going to stop for dinner. If it will be in an hour or if it's going to be too. So I might better eat something now in case I get hungry. See how this is preventative eating from fear. You're afraid that in the next few hours you might feel hunger and you think that would be a bad thing. The other reason we might eat preventatively is because we aren't sure if we will, like what a served. What if at the restaurant there's nothing. I like, what if at the party or buffet there isn't anything good. I better eat now just in case. This rarely happens to my clients, that they can't find something on the menu or what's being served. That's going to work for them. It's very, very rare. So now of course, this makes me think of people with like allergies or food sensitivities. And honestly, that is a whole other situation that we are definitely not talking about today. I'm talking about neuro-typical folks without allergies. If you have an allergy and you need to eat before you go to an event that is again, something altogether different. I'm talking about the idea that you're just thinking, I might not find something and so I might be hungry. And so I best eat now. See how that is. Fear. I had a client that told me, um, this was a few years back that she always traveled with food. Like when she would go out of town, she would pack a lot of snacks, granola bars, and trail mix, stuff like that. She was always afraid that she would get hungry. So I remembered this and I saw, I went back and I looked at some of my old notes with this client and I take notes, I type notes while I'm speaking to clients. So. This is what I have down that she said, She said, I went out of town, just my husband and I this weekend. I intended to pack some snacks, but I got too busy. As I was driving to the airport, I thought I have no food with me, not a single thing. I used to always like to have fruits and vegetables and whole grain crackers. But it was good because I would have snapped on it and maybe not even needed it. It was nice because I only thought about food at meal times. Because it was just the two of us. We could just wait till we were hungry and then go get a meal. When I travel and leave the house, I'm always packing snacks. I always have nuts and an apple just in case. But this is the first time I traveled and didn't bring anything. I didn't snack on anything. I felt lighter. And a little less to worry about. There is plenty of food and I find it when I need it. What an amazing thought. Right? Let me finish. I realize how much I was eating for fear, I would get hungry, preventing hunger. Like it would be terrible to be caught without food. That's the end of, of my notes on that. But I just think that is fascinating. She wasn't necessarily trying to lose weight really while she was out of town, she just decided, okay, there is plenty of food where I'm going, which is really true for any first world country. You're traveling to. I think that thought that she said. There is plenty of food and I find it when I need it. It's so, so great. I remember her feeling really empowered. The other part she really enjoyed was that she noticed when she brought the just-in-case snacks. She ate them, whether she was really hungry or not. So she was able to focus first more on the activities they were doing while out of town, but also enjoy her actual meals more because she was physically hungry for them. So instead of prevented preventative eating random snacks, she brought from home. She waited until she was physically hungry and then they stopped for a meal. I know this sounds sort of basic and I'm kind of like what my kids call over-explaining, but when you really start to examine all the ways that we eat, when we aren't physically hungry, like this preventative eating, it comes up a lot. This eating that we do just in case or mostly out of fear. So this was a pattern this client knew she had, but sometimes we aren't even aware of this preventative eating until we really start looking at our food journals. I know, I know I talk about food journals all the time. But really once again, I want to remind you that your food journal is the most important nutritional study you will ever read. You can identify some of these patterns like, oh, look, I always grab a snack right before getting in the car. Even though I just ate breakfast. Don't underestimate all the patterns we can see by looking at a food journal. And if you can't identify what's going on, not to worry, that's what I'm especially good at. So I would love to take a look at your food journal. Now I did tell you at the beginning, I would talk about when preventative eating might actually be a good idea. If you are a person who does not have flexibility at work and gets very particular breaks, such as a teacher or maybe other types of shift work, or maybe retail work, where you have set breaks. And those are the only times you are allowed to eat. You can't be eating when you are trying to sell clothes at Nordstrom. Right? You have a job of that type, then you need to give your body fuel to get through your shift prior to going. This gets tricky. If you have to leave early in the morning, because I have had clients tell me time and time again, I'm just not hungry for breakfast at that time. And it can take a couple hours in the morning for your appetite to ramp up. Nothing's gone wrong. That just could be your body. That is also especially true. If you have caffeine in the morning. Because that can have a dampening effect on your hunger levels. So if this is the case for you, I would say yes. Eat breakfast in order to prevent hunger from happening prior to your planned lunch break. If that is several, several hours away. This is much different Then eating in case you might get hungry while you shop at Nordstrom. If you are the one on your feet working there, you need the fuel. Even if you didn't feel strong, physical hunger cues before you left for work. So if your schedule is like you have a break now, and then again in five hours, you need to eat and you'll want to make sure that meal is well balanced. Again, protein, fiber fat, in order to give you the fuel you need to get through that shift. So you don't come out on the other side feeling like you're way too hungry. The more you balance your meals and stay hydrated in between the longer longer you'll be able to comfortably go in between those meals around four hours seems to be pretty ideal between meals for optimal digestion, but you know, you know, your body best and you can. See how it goes, the more you balance your meals and the more you stay hydrated, you might be able to play with that number a little. But do you see how this is vastly different than fearing hunger? Or being worried that you might get hungry, it's preventative eating. And yet it's only because you are planning and you know, that that's what works best for your schedule. Honestly, typical physical hunger waves. Are really nothing to worry about when you are eating balanced meals from that negative three to enough, that positive three. And the meal includes protein, fiber, and fat. You will find that your hunger will feel more like a gentle rolling Hills instead of screaming up and down a roller coaster. You will also notice your sugar cravings will decrease as well, which is a great side benefit. So that's what I have for you today, please. As always, I love, love, love to hear from my listeners comment on Instagram or send me a DM or email. I'd love to know what patterns you are seeing in your food journal and that you need some tips on. Don't forget to get your free food. planning sessions scheduled. You've got just two more weeks. And thanks again for listening today to this episode of Eat Well, Think Well, Live Well